Azure Storage Files Reference – MSDN Documentation

Overview

The Azure File storage service offers fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the SMB protocol. This reference provides details on the REST API, SDK methods, and best practices for working with files and directories.

Authentication & Authorization

All requests to the File service must be authorized. Azure supports Shared Key authentication, Shared Access Signatures (SAS), and Azure AD integration.

Authorization: SharedKey <accountName>:<signature>
Authorization: SharedAccessSignature <sv>=<version>...

Operations

Operation	HTTP Method	URI	Purpose
Create Share	PUT	/<shareName>	Create a new file share
Delete Share	DELETE	/<shareName>	Delete an existing share
Create Directory	PUT	/<shareName>/<directoryPath>	Create a directory inside a share
Delete Directory	DELETE	/<shareName>/<directoryPath>	Delete a directory
Create File	PUT	/<shareName>/<directoryPath>/<fileName>	Create an empty file
Upload Range	PUT	/<shareName>/<directoryPath>/<fileName>?comp=range	Upload data to a file range
Download Range	GET	/<shareName>/<directoryPath>/<fileName>?comp=range	Download a file range
Set File Properties	PUT	/<shareName>/<directoryPath>/<fileName>?comp=properties	Set file metadata, attributes
Get File Properties	GET	/<shareName>/<directoryPath>/<fileName>?comp=metadata	Retrieve file properties
List Files & Directories	GET	/<shareName>/<directoryPath>?restype=directory&comp=list	List contents of a directory

Code Samples

Creating a File Share (C#)

using Azure.Storage.Files.Shares;
var serviceClient = new ShareServiceClient("");
var shareClient = serviceClient.GetShareClient("myshare");
await shareClient.CreateIfNotExistsAsync();

Uploading a File (Python)

from azure.storage.fileshare import ShareFileClient
file_client = ShareFileClient.from_connection_string(
    conn_str="",
    share_name="myshare",
    file_path="docs/readme.txt")
with open("readme.txt","rb") as data:
    file_client.upload_file(data)

Downloading a Range (REST)

GET https://myaccount.file.core.windows.net/myshare/docs/readme.txt?comp=range&range=bytes=0-1023 HTTP/1.1
Authorization: SharedKey myaccount:<signature>
x-ms-version: 2023-09-01

Best Practices

Use SAS tokens for limited-time, scoped access.
Leverage parallelism when uploading large files (multiple range PUTs).
Enable SMB encryption for on-premises access.
Monitor with Azure Monitor metrics: FileShareCapacity, FileShareTransactions.